Israel’s Civil Administration in the West Bank is looking into ways to use technology to mute the sound volume of electronically amplified muezzin calls in mosques. Settlement leaders frequently complain about the noise of the muezzins, whose electronically amplified calls to prayer can easily be heard in nearby Jewish settlements, including at night when people…
When members of New York City’s West End Synagogue were recently disinvited at the 11th hour from a long-anticipated Friday gathering with Muslims at Harlem’s Masjid Aqsa, some involved in organizing the meeting feared that hard-line mosque members were behind the cancelation. But at the synagogue the next morning, the mosque’s imam, Souleimane Konate, showed…
Phew! It turns out you can oppose the so-called Ground Zero mosque and can keep your Justin Bieber poster. After a boycott of several days, the singer is back in the good graces of Andy Sullivan, an activist who launched the anti-Bieber campaign based on pro-mosque comments the 16-year-old allegedly made in an interview with…
It’s not every day that New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof cites a rabbinical student, but Rachel Barenblat won that distinction on Sunday, when the writer mentioned her recent success raising money so that a vandalized Queens mosque could replace its damaged prayer rugs. On August 25, a drunk man entered an Astoria, Queens mosque,…
Trade Martin — a country singer who will surely go from obscurity to notoriety and back to obscurity before you can say “publicity stunt” — did something that is either too offensive to be hilarious or too hilarious to be offensive, depending on where you stand: He recorded a completely serious ditty called, ever-so-subtly, “We’ve…
In the midst of the never-ending storm about the Park51 — the Islamic cultural center formerly known as Cordoba House — in Lower Manhattan, which is causing more than a little controversy due to its proximity to Ground Zero, The Daily News ran a funny piece about other interesting “cultural centers” that lie a mere…
Taking on conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and other voices on the right, Slate blogger Tom Scocca makes a reasoned case against comparing the Islamic center planned for Ground Zero to the now-shuttered Catholic convent near the Auschwitz death camp. He writes: The Auschwitz convent is a recurring theme in the…
אַ טייל פֿון די כינעזישע ליבהאָבער פֿון ייִדיש זאָגן, אַז מאַאָ צע טונג האָט ליב געהאַט שלום־עליכמען.
